now president obama has a new plan to drive costs down. good evening, i'm allen martin. >> i'm elizabeth cook. essentially, the president wants to shame schools into keeping tuition low. >> we can't price the middle class and everybody working together to get into the middle class out of a college education. >> reporter: proposes a new college rating system to tie school performance to federal financial aid. the better they do, the more tax money they get and vice versa. the average four-year tuition has tripled in the past 30 years. and americans now owe more than a trillion dollars in student loan debt. new students at san francisco state are already doing the math. >> reporter: elizabeth, 2500 freshmen moving in today and it's hard to find one of them that isn't on some sort of financial aid, loans, scholarships or both. so to get the degree it looks like a lot of students are going to have to graduate from the school of hard knocks. it's move-in day at sfsu, a new home, new friends, and a promise of a better future. exciting for studen